Of Sudden Origin - Part 4 The Crucible

by Harwood, C. Chase

  “Stop!” She called to the others, holding up her hand.

  The group involuntarily crouched and spun around looking in all directions, certain that they were under assault. Nikki ran forward to Susan.

  “I think I’m immune.”

  “Excuse me?” she asked, nerves rattled to the edge.

  “I survived the infection. I’m sure of it.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” swore Aaron, who was just about ready to fall over and die from this steady diet of fear.

  Nikki looked at Ben, “Ben, tell them. You saw me sick and then I got better.”

  “It’s true. She got sick and then got better. Don’t know what else she’s talking about.”

  Nikki grabbed Ben by his jacket. “The fight with the Fiend in the river. I swallowed some of its blood, the baby’s too. I didn’t admit it, but it happened.”

  “Hold on a second,” said Tran. “You ingested blood from an infected person, became sick and then got better?”

  “Yes! That’s what I’m saying. I must be immune.”

  Susan looked at Ben. “You’re certain that this person was infected?”

  “It was a demon all right. No doubt of that.”

  “Well, that’s remarkable,” said Susan. “We know of no case of immunity.”

  “It happened, I swear.”

  Decker said, “What if you didn’t get the blood in your mouth? You said this fight happened in a river? Water up here is chilly, liable to knock your immune system down if you exhaust yourself in it. What if you just caught a cold?”

  “That’s what I’ve always assumed. Like you said, nobody is immune, but I know I got the blood in my mouth. I’ll never forget the coppery taste.” She turned and started back south. “Come on. There’s no time.”

  “Where are you going?” called Susan.

  “To save, Jon. You’ve got to do a blood transfusion.”

  “What?”

  She called over her shoulder, “I’ve got O neg blood. I used to have to volunteer for the Marine Corp Blood drive every fifty days.” She stopped, “In Southern Sudan we were doing exchange transfusions for Malaria on a regular basis. Come on.”

  “But…-”

  “You’re CDC for Christ sake. You know what I’m talking about. Get your asses moving! We can’t let him shoot himself!”

  Nikki picked up her fast walk to a jog, then dumped her pack and began running a sprint. The others followed tentatively at first, the scientists conferring.

  “Could it work?” asked Christy

  Aaron blurted, “What about getting back to Canada? We’ve got the original bacterium in these sample cases!”

  Susan said, “We’re not going to make it to Canada without her. Dump everything but the samples and the hard drives and run. If she is immune, we’ve jumped light years ahead in the ability to fight this thing. Hell, if she’s immune, nothing can happen to hurt that woman. Move!”

  They all dropped their packs on the ground and ran after Nikki.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Cold Steel

  Sam got the AStar wound up again while Kelly called in their findings, certain of survivors. Whether they were still alive was unknown. The searchers would proceed to zigzag east to west while working their way north. The scientists couldn’t have gotten too far in two and a half days. Storm and McNeil patted each other on the back; their needle in the haystack had enlarged to size of a twig.

  Of course they couldn’t know that they were making the wrong choice. They naturally assumed that the refugees would have chosen to move north, not considering their need to travel south first to get to the Canada Road. The AStar’s new search pattern kept them north of the town of Moscow, towards which the refugees, even now, were returning.

  Despite the Army’s desperate need for reconnaissance, with the discovery of the downed Black Hawk, Director Louis-Gelding was able to get an extension on Sam and Kelly’s mission. They would have an additional forty-eight hours before they were to be peeled off for urgent information gathering.

  Jon sat down with his back to a thick tree that stood alone from its charred sisters in the nearby forest. It had survived the inferno and stood green and radiant against a world of blackened sticks and damp ash. He had chosen a piece of high ground in order to observe anything coming from the South. His body felt tired and he knew it wasn’t from the walk. Unlike his comrades further up the road, he was carrying no gear. He had a half full canteen, that he was gulping from. He finished off the water and wanted more, the notion of which, filled him with dread. The first symptom had arrived. He tried to imagine the changes occurring inside of him, his body’s hopeless defenses beginning their valiant last fight. It occurred to him as he shook the last drops onto his lips, that it was a nearly pointless act. But thirst was thirst and the cool water felt good as it soothed his fiercely parched throat.

  He un-holstered his Smith & Wesson, felt its cool steel in the palm of his hand, the weight of it, the cross hatching on the wood clad grip, and his heart began to pound. It was the same intense feeling he got just before he had to step on stage to give a lecture – the fear of public speaking surprisingly similar to the fear of certain death. He utilized the calming technique that he’d developed for such situations: putting his fingers on his wrist, feeling his pulse and willing his heart rate to go down while taking slow, steady, deep breaths. As he counted back from one hundred, the panic slowly subsided and he concentrated once again on the gun. Without racking the slide, he experimented with placing the barrel in his mouth and managed to tap his lower teeth, giving himself a sharp stab of pain and scraped the roof of his mouth as he pulled the gun back out. He chuckled through watery eyes, thinking that suicide by bullet to the head was supposed to be a painless affair. Then despair slowed his heartbeat further as he took stock of it all, the life that he’d led: He had never really loved, though he knew that had changed with Nikki. By the time he was eleven, he knew he wanted to be a reporter. He’d wanted nothing more. Focusing on that task at the expense of nearly everything else. His true love was the out-of-town assignment, the thrill of foreign travel, submerging himself in other cultures. He had friends, but they were really more acquaintances at the various way stations of his life. He’d never had a confidant, a soul brother, someone to spill his guts to – well maybe Granny Washington. His gut spilling snuck into his writing instead – editorializing - something that his editors had put up with because his reporting was so good. He had built a following at the Atlanta Daily Mail and he had been offered national syndication just before Cain’s broke out. His last assignment was a test of that new position. He felt that he’d done well with his final reports. He’d hung on longer than any of the others, the bigger and better known reporters having long bugged out when the shit truly hit the fan.

  He scanned the horizon. His position offered him the ability to see a couple of miles. Nothing was coming his way so he took a deep breath and thought to himself, no time like the present. As his heart began to rev up again, he chambered a round and looked at the dark metal tool. The forty-five-caliber bullet inside would likely take the top of his head off. He’d be just one more horrid sight in a country overflowing with them. He smelled the gun’s barrel, taking in its oily, bittersweet metal scent, and then slipped it carefully into his mouth, this time avoiding tapping his teeth. He thought of his grandmother before she had turned and he dearly hoped that she would be waiting for him on the other side. Then he heard footsteps. Running footsteps. They were coming from the North. He slipped the gun out of his mouth, tapping his top teeth hard, adding more tears to his eyes, and he swore. He squeezed his blurred eyes shut in frustration. Damn it. His friends must have been attacked. Now the Fiends were coming his way.

  He pulled his legs to his chest and crouched on the balls of his feet while trying to blink his vision clear. When he judged that the first Fiend was no more than twenty-feet away, he hopped up, whipped his arm around the tree and fi
red.

  Nikki pulled up short and skidded to a stunned halt. She had heard sonic boom as the bullet wiz past her ear. She bent over breathing hard while looking with incredulity at her friend. “That’s - how - you treat someone - who's trying - to save - your life?”

  Jon dropped the gun. “Oh my God, did I hit you?”

  “No. Good thing you’re a shitty shot.”

  He could see the rest of the group down the road, still running, but slowing their pace. “Are you being chased?”

  “No.” She stood up stretching her lungs with a deep breath. “I’m trying to help you.”

  “What? How?”

  She walked up to him and kissed him full on the mouth before he could react and pull back. She then picked up his pistol and turned the stunned man around back toward Moscow. “Come on. I’ll explain while we jog. We’ve still got time.”

  As they came around the bend in the road, revealing the dam and the beginning of the ruined town, everyone remained skeptical of Nikki's idea, including Jon.

  Nikki countered, “You know that the Army perfected exchange transfusions for severe malaria, particularly for those suffering Cerebral Malaria.”

  Susan said, “They’re not even remotely similar diseases. Malaria is caused by a parasite.”

  Decker, the team’s blood analyst jumped in, “She may have something, though. Like Malaria, the FND-z bacterium rides on red blood cells, right? So swapping out Jon’s blood with Nikki's not only removes a lot of the bacteria, but it also replaces the diseased conduit with one that should theoretically already have antibodies ready to fight off the infection.”

  “What he said,” nodded Nikki.

  Teddy said, “Wait. So you’re talking about taking out Jon’s blood and replacing it with Nikki's?”

  “Exactly,” said Nikki.

  “Gross,” said Amanda, making a face.

  “So what do you do for blood, Nikki?” asked Teddy.

  Christy got on board, her voice rising with excitement. This was what she did. This was stuff she understood. It wasn’t running in sheer terror through an unknown countryside. “We hope that there is a stock of O negative in the aid station’s blood bank. If there’s no O, Nikki, there’s no way you can donate and not die.”

  That’s when Ben noticed that the front door of the house they had taken shelter in the night before. It was open. “I remember closing that.”

  They all followed his look. The day was gray and overcast. The inside of the house was dark. The shotgun hallway bisected the first floor, leading straight to the back. This gave the adolescent male Fiend plenty of room to build up a full head of steam as it charged out the front door, fierce eyes locked directly on Amanda Costas.

  Ben, who had unconsciously lowered his shotgun to hip-height, was surprised when his finger pulled the trigger. The un-aimed blast went wide right, but a couple of pellets of buckshot hit the Fiend in the shoulder, spinning it slightly and throwing off its angle of charge. It was just enough to give a screaming Amanda Costas time to run the other way.

  As the thing passed him, Steven Costas yanked out his Persian scimitar and hacked at the creature, giving it a wide gash across the back. The monster barely flinched, its sole focus remaining on the little girl.

  Jon stuck out a leg and tripped it and then blew the top half of its head off with the Smith & Wesson.

  As the shocked group checked themselves for blood splatters, they were suddenly jarred by Amanda’s renewed screaming. She had run to the wooded far side of the road, only to be met by four more Fiends scrambling through the burned underbrush. It was a classic ambush in the style of wolves: One flushed out the prey and the others chased it down. They went for the smallest and easiest to capture. This pack had been working together for a while. Not one of them was older than eighteen.

  Nikki aimed, but had to release the trigger, the Fiends right on top of the girl. Amanda had her legs swiped out from under her and she fell hard, tumbling and scraping on the rough asphalt, her breath knocked free, cutting off her scream. The snarling, shrieking, things grabbed her up like a rag doll and started running back into the woods. The group of survivors charged after them, running as fast as they could.

  Jon and Steven ran the fastest, both men holding their swords at their sides. Then more Fiends were coming through the woods. They could hear their whoops and howls echoing through the burned trees. Nikki fell to one knee and started firing, taking careful aim with each shot. Ben stopped as well and sprayed buckshot at three that were coming from the right. Then the Fiends stopped. A higher whoop was heard above the others and the second group of Fiends turned and ran back into the denser foliage.

  Jon and Steven had almost caught up with the three who were running with the struggling little girl when the monsters simply dropped her and kept running. Steven threw his sword aside and dove to the ground, pulling his baby into his chest. The child’s sobs were only broken by the deep breaths needed to make more. Jon stood above them, his sword and pistol ready for a second assault, but the Fiends kept retreating into the woods. A hasty inspection revealed that the girl was unbitten, but her many abrasions made it difficult to tell for sure.

  “Dad…Daddy…Daddy. I don’t want to be out here anymore. I…I…want mommy. I…I…want to go home.”

  “I know, Baby. I know.”

  Jon remained focused, saying, “Steven, we gotta get back on the road, back to the school.” He picked up Steven’s sword while the man stood, still holding his daughter.

  The group fast-walked the rest of the way, this time without the distraction of medical debate. Everyone felt eyes watching them, the hairs standing up on the backs of their necks, their eyes dilated, providing maximum visual information.

  It stood with Its pack, hidden in the tree line, watching. Having already saved these Others from the great fire, making them stand hip deep in the much feared lake while the world burned around them, It had stopped the struggle for the little Fresh One; too many Others were dying. There was plenty of food to be found in the forest. The fire had killed many creatures, making them easier to eat than a raw Fresh One. There was no hurry. It could sense from the infant Other that It carried, that more Others were coming from the South. It would wait until there were reinforcements.

  A skinny male looked at this female Other that led them, the one that held the baby with the big eyes, and tightened its muscles with frustration. The infant Other had entered its mind once more – controlling It through the one that led them. Made it stop chasing. Drop its squealing prize. It had it. Had the little Fresh One, its thick young skin smelling so good, the sex of it calling to its loins. It and the Others that had grabbed the Fresh One would have played with it until dark and then finally feasted on its sweet flesh. Then the infant Other made them drop it. It looked with hatred at the infant Other. Its mouth filled with bile as it followed the female that led them back into the deeper wood.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Barricade

  Before doing anything else, they had to sweep the school again. Mercifully, it was still empty. They gathered once more in the school’s panic ridden foyer. “All right,” said Nikki. “This place is too big and we are too few to defend it. We set up shop in the cafeteria. The blood’s there and so is the food. We tie the doors shut, make sure the windows are locked.”

  “Lock the windows?” barked Decker, “You think glass is going to stop these motherfuckers?”

  “We cover the windows and work in the kitchen, staying out of sight.”

  “How long does a blood exchange take?” asked Teddy.

  Susan looked at the still shaken group. “It’ll be a few hours. We have to set things up and then it has to be done incrementally, small amounts, a few minutes at a time.”

  “No offense, Jon,” said Aaron, “but this is a crazy waste of time. We’d be most of the way to our next stop by now. Instead, we’ve locked ourselves into this place where we know there’s infected outside. With
all of that shooting, who knows how many others might be drawn here. If Nikki is immune - great. We can test her blood when we get back to Canada. Find out what makes her tic.”

  “I agree with you,” said Jon, “You’ve lost valuable time. I don’t matter a bit compared to the knowledge that you guys are carrying. We should just turn back around and keep you moving.”

  Aaron gave a satisfied nod, scanning his fellow scientist for back-up. The group as a whole seemed unsure how to proceed.

  “Look, my feelings for Jon aside,” said Nikki, “we were kidding ourselves. There’s no way we were going to walk up that road and survive. That last assault should be proof enough.”

  Tran said, “I gotta agree with Nikki. We know that they, the Army, are out looking for us. We’ve got all we need here. I say we go up to the roof and lay out an SOS with some of these sleeping bags and whatnot. We can write CDC right next to it.”

  “That’s a good idea,” said Nikki. “I’m glad I didn’t shoot you, Mr. Tran.”

  “Feeling’s mutual, Ms. Rosen.”

  They found the roof access via a ladder in a janitorial storeroom. Tran and Ben dragged up the brightest colored sleeping bags they could find and started laying out the signal, holding it down with textbooks. The rest of the group started settling in. First they confirmed that there was O negative stored in the refrigerator; unfortunately, there wasn’t enough for Nikki to get a full transfusion. The result would be a partial transfusion for her. They’d have to top Jon up with A (his blood type) once they’d taken what they could from Nikki.

  Decker, Christy and Susan set up the transfusion space, culling their equipment from the overwhelmingly rancid gymnasium. Nikki, Jon, Aaron, Steven and the kids went to work covering the cafeteria windows with sheets of craft paper and then pulling the blinds so that everyone could move in and out of the kitchen without being observed. They then turned over all of the tables and chairs and shoved them in front of the windows, piling them as high as they could, creating a tangled obstacle course of sorts. If the Fiends wanted in through the windows, they would be slowed down, becoming easier targets. There was one problem that was unsolvable: their minimal supply of ammunition; they’d used up half their reserves. A concerted attack would result in eventual overwhelming odds.